DealNews: A Great Way to Shop for Cheap on Your iPhone!

Have no fear, frugal shoppers! Dealnews.com finally has an iPhone app that places tons of great deals at your fingertips. And though there are a couple of flaws, overall this is a great app to use if you are interested in browsing or receiving alerts about online deals!

Controls:

Everything in the Dealnews iPhone app is very quick and responsive. As soon as you open up the app it escorts you to the ‘Featured’ deals section, and from there you can swipe left or right to change categories, or manually slide a categories bar at the top to find what you are looking for.

Clicking on a deal will lead you to a description of who sells it, the price and shipping cost, and sometimes previously reported prices or usable coupon codes. Additionally, next to the image of the item there is a ‘Buy Now’ button that transfers you right to the source of the deal, and a ‘Save’ button where you can save a deal in your alerts inbox to check it out later. Everything is very quick and simple, and all without noticeable lag or crashing.

Graphical Layout:

Dealnews App

This iPhone app has a nice looking opening screen and a blue theme that looks stylish without getting in the way of the app’s functionality. It looks very similar to the website, and mimics the site’s layout quite well, though obviously in a more practical mobilized form. However, when clicking on a deal, the way information is presented below the picture is definitely a bit messy. It’s basically a jumble of info that includes coupon codes, prices, seller, and other basic info all in one big paragraph, with some of the details highlighted as bold. It’s perfectly readable, but not incredibly organized or eye-pleasing, though that’s an issue that the site itself has too.

Ease of Use:

This iPhone app has some great functions, like its deal alert system, the ability to save deals you like and the ability to connect with Facebook and Twitter. These things work well, and so does the basic browsing function. However, the interface is a bit restrictive in terms of what it lets the user do. Each deal has information such as its popularity (‘Hotness’ level), price and how recent it is, but the ability to sort based on different criteria has not been added. So far deals are only listed by how recent they are, so one has to scroll and manually search for the most popular deals or lowest prices. It’s not a terrible inconvenience, but it’s definitely one that fans of the site will notice.